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Remember how Barack Obama promised during his campaign that he supported the Second Amendment, and only wanted "reasonable restrictions" and "common-sense measures"?
Well, he's been President-elect for three days, and his change.gov site has this to say on the subject:
Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
We knew it was coming ... and here it comes. Bend over.
Let's take those points in order, shall we?
The Tiahrt Amendment
What the gun control lobby says: The Tiahrt Amendment hampers local law enforcement by denying them access to BATF gun trace data.
The truth: The Tiahrt Amendment does nothing to deny gun trace information to law enforcement agencies. It does deny NON-law-enforcement parties the ability to go on "fishing expeditions" through BATF trace data for political ends. (Most firearms traces performed by the BATF are not related to criminal use of the firearm in any case — one of the most common reasons for BATF traces is to find the legal owners of recovered stolen firearms. Many persons are named on BATF trace forms merely because they were witnesses to a crime involving a firearm.) It also enforces a pre-existing provision that National Instant Check System records be promptly destroyed as already required by law, restricts disclosure to third parties of Federal records of lawful gun purchases, and forbids (again) the BATF from creating a computerized Federal gun-owner registry (again, something that has been illegal since 1986).
An interesting and telling detail: The gun control lobby's "point man" against the Tiahrt Amendment has been New York City Mayor Bloomberg. But when Kansas Representative Tiahrt offered to negotiate technical modifications to the language of the Tiahrt Amendment to the extent necessary to address legitimate law-enforcement needs, Bloomberg broke off negotiations. He wasn't interested. Because Bloomberg doesn't care about law enforcement needs; he wants to use the data in his quest to be able to sue firearms manufacturers for criminal misuse of legally purchased, non-defective firearms. The City of Chicago wasn't interested in law enforcement either; they wanted a list of every person in the US (not "in Chicago", note, or even "in Illinois") who owned more than one handgun.
Closing the gun show loophole
What the gun control lobby says: Criminals can go to gun shows and buy guns without having to pass a background check.
The truth: Two kinds of gun sales occur at gun shows — dealer business sales, and private person-to-person sales. A buyer purchasing a gun from a dealer at a gun show must pass a NICS check and fill out a Federal form 4473 exactly as though they had walked into the dealer's store, and the dealer must report that sale to the BATF and must retain the Form 4473 for twenty years exactly as for an in-store purchase. A buyer and seller making a private person-to-person sale must still comply with all applicable state laws regarding person-to-person transfers. That means that it is legal to make private person-to-person sales at a gun show if and only if private person-to-person sales are already legal in that state, and while no Federal paperwork is required for person-to-person transfers, buyer and seller must still comply with any applicable state laws.
In short, there is no gun-show loophole.
Interesting detail: Recently a Boston yellow journalist attempted to "prove" the existence of the "gun show loophole" by travelling to New Hampshire to buy a gun at a gun show there. The dealer wouldn't sell to him because he wasn't a New Hampshire resident. So he had a friend who lives in New Hampshire purchase a gun for him. The gun never actually left the friend's possession; if the friend had then given the gun to said journalist, it would have been an illegal straw-man purchase. The journo then bragged in print about how he'd shown how flawed the law was and proven the existence of the loophole, although the truth was he didn't actually understand the straw-man law well enough to understand he hadn't actually broken it.
But he had the intent to violate the straw-man law, and the BATF has a poor sense of humor about that. End result: Journo and friend are both under BATF investigation on Federal firearms charges.
So, just where was this loophole, exactly....?
"Childproof" guns
California currently has a bill in the legislature that would mandate that all handguns sole in California be "smart guns" that can only be fired by their authorized owner. This is what's usually meant when gun control advocates talk about "childproofing" guns.
There turn out to be a few problems with the idea, though. You see, the technology to do it doesn't exist. The one company that's backing the legislation knows that the technology doesn't exist, but they're hoping to get the letgislature to pay for them to develop such a technology which they can then market for other purposes. In short, they want the State of California to fund their R&D. Law enforcement agencies hate the idea and have been uniformly opposed to it, because no mechanism has been proposed which (a) cannot be defeated, (b) will work reliably, especially under adverse conditions, and (c) "fails safe". In fact, it's not possible even to define what "failing safe" is with such a technology. If the "fail-safe state" leaves the gun fireable, then it can't prevent unauthorized use; all a gun thief need do is break the sensor or remove the battery. If the "fail-safe state" leaves the gun unfirable, citizens or police officers with "smart guns" could end up dead because their sidearm wouldn't go off when they desperately needed it to.
The assault weapons ban
What the gun control lobby says: "These weapons belong on foreign battlefields." "The preferred weapon of criminals and drug gang members."
The truth: What the gun control lobby calls an "assault weapon" actually refers mostly to a set of cosmetic features that have no significant effect upon the actual functioning of the gun. Some, like pistol grips on rifles, have no functional effect other than to make a rifle more comfortable to hold. Ventilated barrel shrouds, another feature frequently spoken of in tones of fear and hysteria, are a totally cosmetic feature on anything but a fully-automatic weapon (that's "machine gun" to you). Manufacturers of cheap guns put ventilated barrel shrouds on them to increase their appeal to the Rambo-wannabe set. "High-capacity magazines"? How is a pistol with a 12-round magazine more deadly than one with a 10-round magazine? Is there some natural repulsive force between magazines that makes it impossible for a criminal to carry, say, three ten-round magazines instead of two fifteen-round ones?
Or how about flash hiders? The fear-and-loathing story is that flash hiders conceal a shooter's location. They do no such thing. What they actually do is help to prevent the muzzle flash of a rifle from dazzling the shooter at night, particularly in automatic fire. That might become relevant when there are midnight gun-battles with fully-automatic weapons in the streets of L.A.
Now, a muzzle brake? A muzzle brake looks almost identical to a flash hider, and reduces recoil forces by redirecting gases at the muzzle. So, in simplistic terms, it makes it easier to shoot a more powerful rifle. But a flash hider is on the list of features that make a rifle an "assault weapon", while a muzzle brake isn't. Go figure, huh? Still think there's any actual logic behind this "assault weapon" stuff?
And what's this about "fully automatic"?
Well, you see, the gun control lobby would like you to think that any ugly black gun is a machinegun that will fire indefinitely as long as the trigger is held down. But it just ain't so. A civilian-legal AR15 works just like a Browning or H&K semi-automatic hunting rifle: You pull the trigger once, you get one shot. Pull it again, you get another shot. Lather, rinse, repeat. "But doesn't that mean you can just spray bullets like a firehose?" you ask. Well, sure, you can just point in the general direction of the target and yank on the trigger as fast as you can. We shooters call that "spray and pray". Because divine intervention is about the only factor that's going to put your rounds on target. In the words of Major John C. Pilaster, "Two hundred misses per minute isn't firepower. One hit is firepower."
The fact is, ever since 1934 it has been illegal to buy, sell or transfer an automatic weapon in the United States without paying a BATF transfer tax, and you must have a Federal Class III license from the BATF in order to do so. Only one murder has ever been committed in the US with a full-automatic weapon legally purchased after 1934; and that was a police officer who murdered his wife with a Thompson submachinegun that he purchased for police use. All of the rare crimes committed since then with automatic weapons have one thing in common: the weapons were already illegal in the first place. What is making them even more illegal going to do? Criminals don't obey laws. That's why we call them criminals.
"The preferred weapon of criminals and drug gang members"? Oh, please. When was the last time you saw a gang member standing on a street corner with an AK47 stuffed down his pants?
The "assault weapons ban" is bullshit, pure and simple. Many politicians who support banning "assault weapons" can't even explain what they think one is. It's an attempt to separate out a group of guns, demonize them, and ban them — then move on to the next group. That's a process that won't end until every type of gun actually useful for hunting or self-defense has been banned. At which point the gun control lobby will say, "Well, the guns you have left aren't any use for defense or hunting anyway, so what do you need them for?" And if you think I'm kidding, that the gun control lobby would never take your deer rifle — hey, if it could penetrate a bulletproof vest (which something like 99.9% of centerfire rifle rounds will) and has even a low-power a telescopic sight (which, at this point, over 90% of hunting rifles do), it's "a deadly sniper rifle". Hand it over, bud.
Why can't the Democratic Party learn from experience? The last time the Democratic Party lost control of Congress, it was largely because of voter backlash against one gun control law after another after another. But here we go again, not even in office yet, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are already starting to talk up the new gun-control laws they're going to pass. When they say "common-sense measures", they mean keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them ... and they don't think anyone should have them. It's like a knee-jerk reflex — "Hey, we're in power! BAN TEH GUNZ0RZ!"
This, by you, is "change"? From here, it looks like "Democratic Party Business As Usual."
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Get religion out of government, get the Reps back to their pseudo-libertarian roots, small government, left-of-center social authoritarianism, right-of-center economic policies, some small amount of realistic chokepoints on unbridled international 'free trade'
Hrm, actually, I'm going to chip in on my angle on the pros and cons of 'free trade' (I got put on the spot about this recently)
My solution to making Internation Free Trade a non-exploitative force.
Let american companies outsource as much labor oversees as they wish, on the condition that the products they make overseas, be offered back to those markets at a price commensurate with the local economy.
Simple put, if IBM opens an assembly plant in Malaysia, paying its workers $1/hr, it would be required to sell laptops in malaysia for $100.
I have always been troubled by the notion of workers building consumer goods that they themselves could never possibly afford to purchase. Making those same goods available to developing nations according to their equivalent purchasing power is my answer to the whole world peace/ending hunger/educating the masses dilemma
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What you're talking about here would, first off, cause a regulatory explosion. Okay, so IBM has to sell laptops at $100? Despite the fact that while the local labor force might get paid $1/hr, the horde of lawyers responsible for navigating the IP thicket costs a lot more? Clearly, you can't ask IBM to sell their laptop below cost... and you can't trust IBM to tell you what their real cost is... so we need some independent agency to determine what the true cost of their laptop is.
Once you know the true cost, how are you going to force IBM to sell there? Any time you want the law to force someone to do things, you're talking about an enforcement agency. Okay, so let's add an enforcement agency on top of the regulatory agency.
And how many laptops are they required to sell at $100? Hmm. Clearly, this is a matter for Congress to decide. Congress will, using the information provided to them by the regulatory agencies, force IBM to sell X laptops at $100. Now, what happens if those X laptops don't sell?
... Oh! And even after Congress makes these decisions, every Tom, Dick and Harry who has an axe to grind against IBM (in other words, all of their business competitors) will file lawsuits alleging IBM is not in compliance with these laws and should be punished. So now the courts get involved, too.
So, once you've presided over the conversion of decentralized capitalism to a centrally planned socialist system, you're ... going to be effectively upping the price of labor in Malaysia. IBM isn't going to go along with this out of the goodness of their hearts. They're going to say "well, each laptop costs $100 more if we build it entirely in the US, so let's do it here and avoid the headache."
Which puts tens of thousands of poor Malaysians out of a job. Instead of $10/day sitting in an air conditioned factory, they're now earning $1/day doing backbreaking labor in hot fields.
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Laptops are an amusing example, because the local market for them is lightly lessened (but improves as the company improves). But more regular goods are less problematic.
Anyway, the point being is that currently, There's only one problem I see with unrestricted international business, and that's that eventually there is a financial imperative to keep developing nations poor and exploitable. While it wasnt a suggestion for an implementation, I think my idea stands as the seed for a model that might be.
Yes, there's companies out there that do things like fund local education, even to the college level. But inevitably what happens there, are these newly-educated folks, immediately try to leave the country in favor of better employment. A few people get out, underdeveloped nation stays underdeveloping.
But yeah, you've hit the nail on the head that it's got to be a method that would still keep it profitable for enterprises to be there, while still deflecting the imperative to keep the supplying nation underdeveloped and cheap.
This is, and always has been, that for the rich to stay rich, they must by necessity keep a certain percentage of the population poor, or else the whole thing breaks down. That's a model that (just like the Game Theory guys) I think can be transcended out of at some point. I'm by no means a fan of regulation and law as a means to this end. Game-changing incentive processes are what works for things like this.
Pursuing for a truly 'open' market, where products are available to everyone, not just those in the most profitable markets, is still, historically, one of the most peace-inducing things to happen to any nation. Free Trade is great when it's consumer-driven, it's an unbalancing force when it isnt. We sure as hell dont have that right now. Any mechanism that shifts it back in that direction is worth figuring out.
but yeah, the idea is inevitably, 'change the game, not the rules'
(and in other news, NoScript now complains that Ronin's journal is attempting an XSS `sploit, every time I try to post to it)
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This theory belongs right beside Communism. Like Communism, it's a great theory as long as you can trust people to act in opposition to their own interests. Like Communism, it will require an oppressive state in order to coerce people into acting in opposition to their own interests.
Sorry. It's bogus. It doesn't work.
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(and since you invoked Ricardo, well yeah, I'd be interested on what he would have to say, about keeping wages low by concentrating on low-price enabling goods, and its effects on things.)
Point being, I agree that enforcement is ridiculous. Game-theory-like mechanisms of 'willing collusion' are the way to do something like this. Setting up a system where the less profitable option is /not/ to participate is the way to do things like this. Now, how to do that, well, that's going to likely take a few game-changing technologies, both physical and systematic.
In short, we're looking at a conceptual scenario from opposite ends of the process. I'm saying we need new canal built, you're telling me that since shovels are evil, there should be no talk of canals.
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The only problem is that corporations aren't evil, they have no imperative, and the wages aren't kept artificially low.
Good and evil are moral statements. As such, they cannot be ascribed to nonsapient entities. There is no imperative to keep prices low; there are, however, incentives. The wage prices are not artificially low: the Malays who work for $10/day do so because it's a higher wage than they can earn in the fields. There is no cabal enforcing a $10/day price ceiling on Malay labor, which would be keeping wages artificially low. Instead, the wages earned by the Malays are the result of the free market.
If you want to posit the existence of coercive effects by the Malaysian and/or United States governments, fine, I'd probably agree with you on that. But the cure for that is to change the government, not to change IBM.
I repeat: your idea is bogus and counterproductive. To the extent you're saying "the game needs to change," fine, everyone agrees, which makes it trivial. To the extent you're saying "this is how we can change it," no, the economics doesn't work.
Free trade, for all its problems, has historically been not just the most effective way of lifting people out of poverty, but the most effective by such a huge margin that nothing else even comes close.
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The knock-off companies already exploit this market with cheap imitations where they can, so there's obviously a market for it.
As a western consumer, it drives me crazy that there are products I want out there that I'm prevented from buying from trade cabals and exclusive deals (just look at the US cellphone market for an idea of how ridiculous this can get). Opening up markets to me, means finding ways to open up the market to consumers as well as suppliers. Raising wages decreases profits, but focussing only on the markets where there is maximum profit is a behaviour we could likely change. Look at the billions in financial aid going to developing nations that notoriously gets chewed up in administration and wasteful projects. How about using some of that to subsidize western goods to a price affordable in the economic scope of these nations. Nations develop faster from the people-up, not government-down. It's like I always say; build a man a fire, you keep him warm for the night; SET a man on fire, you keep him warm for the rest of his life :-P
Basically, free trade goes both ways. breaking down economic barriers for consumers to choose who they by from is a big one for me. When you have vast differentials in purchasing power because of the relative economies of nations is something we definately need to figure out how to buffer and adjust.
And you know what, for the companies that /have/ done something similar to this in various countries, they've found an immediate benefits. Cheap illegal knock-offs of their products start to dissappear, the population starts demanding the real thing, and the nation starts to transform from a source of cheap labor into something far more vital.. a new full-profit market.
South Korea and Vietnam have both been fairly good examples of this behaviour.
At this point, I'm kinda amused Ronin hasnt chipped in on this yet actually - I think he's just sitting back and seeing where we end up.
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Free trade.
By definition, free trade is noncoercive and nonexploitative. If there's coercion, the market isn't free. This applies to government intervention and "company towns" that force people to buy from the company and only the company.
If you want to end exploitation, then embrace the system which bars all exploitation. Free trade. Let people decide for themselves if they're being exploited or if they're being given valuable opportunities.
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I'll check with some others
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I don't suppose NoScript is getting confused by my style chrome being loaded from another site...?